Beautiful Lives

Chapter 23

Chapter 23 – Angel (Sarah McLaughlin)

"Hi Lexi, come on in," Dr. Nightingale greeted me at the door of her office, which instantly tipped me off to the fact that something was seriously wrong. She always hid behind her door and let her patients come to her. If she was twiddling her thumbs and waiting for me to arrive, there was bad news on the way.

I sat down at her desk, and crossed my legs. I didn't have much strength back, but I was trying as hard as I possibly could to be normal, and the wheelchair when it wasn't absolutely necessary didn't help.

"So how are you feeling?" she asked.

"Better," I said, slowly. I'd been seeing the therapist and diligently taking my Prozac, and somehow, it had been helping. For the past few weeks, I'd felt considerably less numb, and almost like myself again, although I only made it to school about half the time, between the pain and the exhaustion.

"I'm glad," she said, although the look on her face told me otherwise.

"So what's going on?" I asked, finally. I couldn't stand the way she was looking at me.

"I've been going over your test results from last week," she began. I'd been expecting this meeting for a while – we'd done a bunch of bloodwork and a number of scans to re-evaluate the cancer, and been nervously anticipating the results. It didn't take a doctor to see that I wasn't getting any better, but it definitely took a few formal sheets of test result paper to actually believe it.

"I really wish I could give you better news," Dr. Nightingale finally said. "But I've gone through your medical history, and your cancer has spread a lot since the last time you were sick,"

"But we already knew that," I said. She nodded.

"We've known that since the very beginning," she replied. "And that's why we gave you higher doses of chemo. Which is ultimately what caused your infection a few months back,"

"Okay," I didn't really have anything else to say, because the look on her face told me that those days were only the start of my problems.

"The chemo didn't work the way we wanted it to," she said. "And I really hoped that the transplant would be what you needed,"

"But?"

"But, apparently I was wrong," she finished. "I'm so sorry Lexi, but your scans have shown no improvement, and the cancer is still spreading,"

The room lapsed into silence, and I bowed my head to look at my lap. This was it – the terrible moment I'd been waiting for for the majority of my short life. This was the end.

"What do we do now?" I finally asked.

"Well, we have a couple of options. We can hospitalize you and try to go in with more intensive treatments, but you'd have to be an inpatient for a while to minimize risk of infection. We can keep going with the same regimen we've been trying, but add radiation for some more targeted therapy to specific areas. We can try surgeries to remove some of the mets that we're finding in other areas of your body. Or..." she took a deep breath. "And this is entirely your decision Lexi, but we can stop the treatments altogether,"

The words rang in my ears, and I met Dr. Nightingale's grief-filled eyes. She looked even more defeated than I felt.

"Why?" I asked. "If we still have all these options, why would we stop the treatments?"

"Because, at this point, I really can't guarantee that any of them are going to work," she said. "Honey I am so sorry, but the choice isn't quite what you think it is. These treatments are just going to make you feel worse than you already do, and the with the way your scans look right now, I can't see them being very effective. I'm not trying to convince you one way or the other, but you really need to understand the options you have,"